


now the darkness comes for me (and it comes for you)

by Golbez



Series: the more you grow [1]
Category: Battle B-Daman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Animal Death, Assisted Suicide, Bad Ending, Break the Cutie, Brotherhood, Child Death, Dark, Emotional Manipulation, Feral Behavior, Gen, Mind Control, POV Second Person, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, guilt trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/Golbez
Summary: There's a dream I had / Where somebody watched out for me and youAnd in the end of life / There was no one there for me and youAbaba's two young charges, Yamato and Biarce, must decide what makes their freedom.
Relationships: Biarce & Yamato
Series: the more you grow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093199
Kudos: 1





	now the darkness comes for me (and it comes for you)

**Author's Note:**

> I consider this darker than any other B-dafic I've written to date. Read the content warnings and stay safe.
> 
> Set in an AU where Yamato was raised by Ababa. I don't consider this the "canon" or "final" version of events in this AU, but just one way things could have gone.
> 
> Soundtrack for this fic: [Brother - The Rural Alberta Advantage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atq0SG4ocsU)

Biarce's resolve teeters once you've opened the vent in the wall. Everything about him comes to a halt as he turns around to face you.

"Yamato." His voice fires in the dim light of the training room like a shot from a B-daman. His pale skin awash in the soul orb's purple glow only grows paler as he steps toward you. "We shouldn't do this."

"It's just one night." Your mouth is dry as you reach over and place your hand on his arm. He does not flinch. "We'll be back before Ababa even knows we're gone. C'mon."

Red eyes blink at you. He pulls away. "I can't go," he says, "He'll know right away."

"Ababa?" You glance at the orb above you, its hum a din when the room is empty. "He's asleep."

"No, not—" He breathes in, hard, then reaches back to you and gently urges you toward the open vent. He moves like wood, none of his characteristic grace. "It's not important. Go without me. I can close the vent after you and keep watch."

Freedom beckons to you through the vent, and you know it's there because of the map you and Biarce spent a year scratching into the undersides of the battlefields in the elite match room. It calls to you after a year of charting rooms and identifying routes through the base.

"We promised to see the sky together," you tell him.

"We will," replies Biarce with a stern nod. "Not tonight though. Now, go."

You want to protest more. You want to pull him into the vent with you and make him crawl ahead so he can't turn back until you reach the outer rooms of the base and make a break for the _outside_ from there.

You clamber into the vent alone and you hear him shut it behind you.

***

Your marks during lessons have never been as high as your brother's, nor has any book ever held your attention for longer than a page. Ababa laments you for being a fool and an oaf in the same breath he lauds you for the sheer strength that ripples from you the moment you touch a B-daman. Your brother devours knowledge and control. You hunger for skill and power.

But you took the time to study this time, committing pieced-together directions to memory. Biarce had insisted you both learn the map by heart; now you know he never meant to come with you.

You will have words with him when you get back, but first, you have to deal with the dead end before you.

You curse and trace back the route mentally. Where did you take a wrong turn?

Course correction is difficult, but certainly not impossible. You make your way back to a fork and start down another path. You prowl forward with your body low to the vent floor, tricking your body into a memory of squeezing through a rocky tunnel after a meowing sister who'd found herself trapped during the hunt.

You notice too late that you've put all your weight onto some grating. It screeches as its bolts tear and, before you can leap away, it drops away from under you.

***

Lucky: you are a master of landing safely on the ground from certain heights. Years of racing wild cats do wonders for the reflexes.

Not so lucky: you've landed in someone's bedroom. Someone whom Ababa must like a lot if he gets his own room. The agent in question has leapt out of his bed and has a sleek black B-daman pointed at you. Wide green eyes flick between you and the broken vent grate overhead, and a mane of messy golden hair frames his very confused expression. He couldn't have been much older than you.

"Who," he growls like a precision shot searching for its mark, "the hell are you?"

"I'm Yamato," you answer automatically, shrugging at him. "Sorry about waking you up. I got lost and couldn't figure out which way to take."

"You...got lost?" He lowers the B-daman, blinking at you. "In the _vents_?"

"Yeah." You start looking around, trying to find a way to climb back up. His room's spartan decor inspires few ideas, but you think you can make a jump from his desk and catch onto the opening that way. "Hey, can you not tell Ababa you met me? I'd like to escape tonight without any trouble."

"Escape? You a prisoner of the Shadow Alliance or something?"

You pause, looking down at him from where you'd climbed onto his chair. You haven't been a normal human boy for very long, a meager five years—half your life—in fact, and you haven't exactly met a lot of people in that time. Whatever human criteria for trusting a stranger whose bedroom you'd dropped into exists, you wouldn't know it.

But you were a cat before you were human. Something in your gut tells you this one's okay.

"No," you answer, "Ababa just won't let my brother and me go outside."

His expression softens, and he sets his B-daman down by his bed. "Okay," he says, "I'll help you then."

"Huh?"

"C'mon." He grabs some brown fabric off the foot of his bed and pulls it over his sleepwear. "I'll walk you to the exit. No one's going to stop Hurricane Gray heading out, even at this time of night."

He pauses like he's waiting for a reaction, but you don't recognize his name. The moment passes, and he's leading you out into a corridor in a part of the base you've never visited. The two of you move fast. Gray picks up on the urgency coiling beneath your gait and thankfully adopts it as you sweep through empty halls. Your footsteps are light, Gray's a little less.

The air grows still.

The hall opens into a spacious room, large double doors set into the wall across you. It must be the way out.

And Ababa is waiting for you.

"This is unacceptable." Ababa's words strike with a honed precision. "I had thought you'd learned your lesson last year, but to go as far as disturbing Gray on the eve of his mission—"

"Dad," you start to plead.

" _Dad?_ " hisses Gray, turning to stare at you with his brow knit together. He backs away from you, looking between you and Ababa. You don't miss the way his body tenses, the way his movement turns rigid, as though repelling himself from you. "Ababa, what's going on?"

Ababa steps forward and takes off his hat. "I'll deal with you later, Gray." His third eye opens. A beam shoots out of it, striking Gray, and the boy goes slack.

You're at his side and examining him at once. You'd just met, so you're not sure you can say you're friends, but he'd, for some reason, wanted to help. Guilt gnaws at your gut as you shake him, only to be met with a stony silence and an unseeing gaze.

"He's under my control for now." Ababa comes close, third eye still open. He is gazing at you, but the eye is trained on Gray still. "Yamato, you should not have involved him."

You swallow, trying to ignore Gray's unsettling gaze. You could pin the blame of his involvement on him, but your wild mother never taught you to shirk the consequences of your actions. You turn instead to face the cat you call father.

"Now then, where is your brother?"

"In bed," you answer. "This was all me."

Ababa's eyes narrow. He strides forward, past you, into the hall. He takes you both back the way you came. He pauses only to leave Gray in his room, sending the boy back to bed with no memory of his encounter with you.

You walk after him, footsteps matching his silent ones. The wasteland where you spent half your life had been harsh but plentiful in prey, so you'd stalked through it at your wild mother's heels and learned to dampen your steps. The hush seems to suit Ababa as you both go deeper into the base, past all the rooms you'd never seen before, into a more familiar darkness, without saying a word to each other.

Ababa does not need to know that you are quiet because you are committing the way back to memory.

***

He walks you all the way to the training room, and your heart sinks as you realize he already knew where Biarce was. The lights come on as Ababa enters, revealing Biarce standing in front of the closed vent, hands behind his back. His gaze is trained on Ababa, his lips pressed together into a thin line, his poise that of prey admitting gracious defeat.

"Master Ababa." Biarce does not make excuses, simply crossing the room. He strides past battlefields and walks directly under the soul orb, but spares none of them a glance.

"I expected better from you both." Ababa's golden eyes are narrowed with displeasure. His teeth are bared just enough to show his anger. He chastises you both like a rapidfire spread of shots. "How many times must I remind you of the danger outside the base? Neither of you are ready to leave!"

"I bet you let Gray leave all the time," you say, letting the accusation drive your words. Maybe it's wrong of you to invoke Gray's name like this, but you are just—so—frustrated— "Aren't your other agents all kids too?"

"Agents are not as important as you." Ababa's reply is quick, well-practiced. "Great destinies await you both, and there are those who want you both dead for it. Besides..." His expression softens, and you feel a twinge of guilt. "I would not be able to bear, on a personal level, losing either of my little ones."

Your wild mother freely doted upon you with licks and scratches, tokens of an affection that transcended species. Ababa is much more careful with the currency of his love, so you crave it and this time, when he calls you his little ones—you break and let your guilt take over.

"I'm sorry," you choke out. "I...I just want to be outside again."

Ababa shakes his head, turning to give you his undivided attention. "And what of Biarce? He has never been outside. You were going to leave him here alone while you enjoyed yourself, Yamato?"

"No..." you protest, but it is weak. Even if it had been Biarce's last minute idea that you go alone, you shouldn't have listened to him. You should have tried to harder to bring him with you, or even just stay with him and call the attempt off. "Dad, I was being selfish, wasn't I?"

"You were," Ababa replies quietly. He reaches for your hand with one paw, taking it in his and patting it with the other. "But you need only promise you will not do this again and I shall let you both return to your room quietly. No punishment this time."

You swallow and open your mouth. It takes you a moment still, to find the words, to say, "I promise."

For now. Freedom lures you with the promise of running free under the sky again.

"I promise too," whispers Biarce. You glance at him and find his expression carefully indifferent.

Ababa's expression curls into a smile, many-toothed and wide. It is not his most pleasant smile, but you take what you can get. He is your father. He took you out of the wilderness and clothed you and taught you what it meant to be a real boy and, if nothing else, he brought you to your brother.

You stare at the floor the entire way back to the room you share with BIarce.

***

"I'm going for a hunt," you say, breaking the silence in your room.

Biarce looks up from his book, first at you, then at the clock above the door. He sets it aside and uncoils himself from his sheets to sit on the edge of his bed, feet dangling a good distance from the floor. You follow his gaze. It's almost midnight.

"It's late."

"Doesn't matter, we were going to stay out anyway." You jump out of your own bed, grabbing your jacket as you make for the door. You'd spent so long anticipating this night, and now your energy is bursting at your seams. How can Biarce just power himself down and go back to reading? "Be back soon."

"Don't get caught." Biarce does not otherwise try to stop you when you slip out the door.

You gaze into the corridor, its low light harsh and cold as ever.

The hunt is on.

You creep through the halls of the base's inner sanctum, edging through the shadows and claiming the darkness of your home as your own. You hunt the pieces of life that fall through the cracks. Candy wrappers abandoned by passing agents. B-daballs straying from clumsy hands. Buttons popped loose from their garments. Trinkets of daily life, forgotten by all.

You pounce in and claim them all.

The hunt leads you toward Ababa's chambers this time, and you pause at the darkened entrance. You've already angered him once less than an hour ago, do you dare risk a second time?

You straighten your back and slip through the door. The cavernous room greets you, with its multitude of pillars that let you stay hidden as you advance through the room's length until you reach the point where it opens up to a fake outside.

A single, massive orb rests in the middle of this area, and a harsh red is slowly spreading across the blackened sky. Ababa stands facing the edge, gazing up as _something_ starts taking shape.

The air grows still.

You find yourself holding your breath, aware that you are witnessing something forbidden to you. Ababa steps closer, and a golden eye forms above him. You press into the pillar you're hiding behind.

Ababa kneels before the eye.

"Ababa, is Biarce safe?" The eye rumbles like a slow-building power shot, a promise of destruction and terror and the end of all things and you are frozen to your spot.

"He should be asleep now," replies Ababa. "Master Marda-B, this is not the first time Yamato has tried to lead him astray. Is he truly necessary for your plans?"

"Yamato's B-daspirit potential is too strong to ignore. Separate them if you must, but keep him close still. I will have Biarce harvest his B-daspirit when it is ready."

"Master, forgive my question." Ababa looks up to the eye. "But what if...Biarce refuses?"

"Then you have my permission to eliminate Yamato."

"I understand, oh wise one." Ababa rises from the floor, and the eye dissipates. Something in the air changes, a release of breath all around, but you don't move, not yet. Ababa starts to pace, back and forth before the orb, talking aloud to himself. "Hm, I suppose his own room would be an acceptable present...they'll have to train apart from each other too. Ah, I must have this prepared in time..."

He finishes his musing, and heads toward a door you hadn't noticed, deeper into the base. Seconds tick by.

You sink to the floor and lean against the pillar. You don't move for a little longer.

***

When you burst into your room, Biarce is still awake and waiting for you.

"Biarce—" you start, but he rises off his bed without warning.

"Happy birthday, Yamato," he says. You stand there, blinking, as Biarce reaches under his pillow and pulls out a box. When he holds the box out to you, you only stare.

"Huh?"

"It's your birthday," says Biarce. Red eyes meet yours, glimmering as a rare, tiny smile appears on Biarce's face. "It isn't much, but I wished to get you something."

You take the box, your chest tightening as you try to swallow the lump growing in your throat. You'd forgotten entirely, but your brother—your brother remembered, and within the box is a piece of red fabric. He's still smiling when he steps close, picks it up, and moves to tie it around your neck.

"It's a scarf," he adds, clearing his throat as Ababa might. He is waiting, you realize, for your reaction.

You hug him. He stiffens first, but swiftly wraps his arms around you in return and leans into the comfort of contact. When he pulls away, you start rubbing your eyes, trying to stop yourself from crying in front of him.

You are failing badly at this.

"Biarce, it's great. I..." You swallow again, wiping your eyes on your sleeves and trying to find the right words. You want to tell him how much you care about him, how he makes your days trapped inside brighter and more bearable because he is your brother and the other half of your soul. You want to tell him all of this, but instead, you steel yourself and think back to what you heard in Ababa's chambers. "We need to leave."

His smile, already small, fades into nothing. "What?"

"I heard Ababa talking to this—this giant eye." You gesture, trying to impress upon him the importance of this. "I know that sounds crazy but, but—Ababa was reporting to him and calling him master and this eye—this eye told him to separate us. Ababa's going to separate us so we should just go...I know the way out now and..."

Biarce closes his eyes and inhales. When he opens them again, you've fallen silent.

"Master Marda-B is nothing to worry about," he says.

You start to back away, staring at him with wide eyes.

"Yamato, don't worry about it, okay?" he tries to smile again, but terror is starting to grip you, and you can feel your instincts fighting to take over. You want to fight, or run...

"So you know?" you barely manage to demand from him. "You know you're going to take my B-daspirit?"

"Take your—" Biarce stops, going rigid as his eyes widen. "What are you talking about?"

"I heard it loud and clear," you reply, "You're going to harvest my B-daspirit when it's strong enough."

His hands curl into fists, and his eyes only widen further. You watch as Biarce starts to shake, his brow furrowing deep and his lips turning down into a harsh scowl.

For the first time, you are seeing your brother become angry.

"I was not informed of this," he states, words plummeting from him like B-daballs coming to abrupt stops. "Master Ababa said you would be safe. Master Marda-B said you would be with me forever. _They must have lied_."

A chill runs down your spine, and you are frozen in place.

"I knew this day would come, Yamato." Biarce steps away and slumps onto his bed. "I knew you would find out, but I didn't realize...I didn't want to realize how little you mean to them."

"Biarce?"

His gaze snaps back up to you. "Marda-B's going to destroy everything outside. Everything you like about the world. And he's going to use me to do it."

"Is that why you're not allowed outside?" You settle into curiosity driven by your fear, and your start inching toward him, wanting only to hug your brother once more.

"I...never thought of it that way," he admits, looking down to his hands. Pale, like the rest of him. Garbed in red gloves when you both train. He shakes his head. "I see now. They don't wish me to learn of the world so I will not care when I destroy it...but—" His gaze meets yours again.

"They didn't expect I'd tell you all about it, did they?" you ask. You don't resist grinning at him. You breathe in, and out, and feel yourself sinking to some sort of calm.

Biarce returns your grin, and that's how you know this night is only going to get more and more bizarre.

"No, they didn't." Biarce reaches under his pillow again, but he does not remove whatever it is he has hidden under there. Not yet. Instead, he chuckles, a soft noise that barely fills the room. "Master Marda-B and Master Ababa could not imagine that you would tell me about the sky, or the dirt under your hands and feet, or the freedom of running free. Yamato, there's a world out there I know and love because you told me about it...and...Master Ababa realized too late, I think, that I care about you more than I should."

He sighs. "This isn't the birthday I want you to have, but if Master Ababa is going to keep us apart from now on, this is our only chance." He pulls something out from under the pillow, long and metallic and decidedly sharp looking. You stare at it, once again holding your breath.

Biarce pulls the dagger out of its sheathe and turns its handle toward you.

"I'm sorry," he continues. "I need you to kill me."

***

You lean against your room's door, arm around your knees, knees to your chest. Your heart pounds away. Your breath comes fast but catches in your throat. The flimsy metal of the door is all that keeps you apart from your brother. You can hear him pacing within.

You'd turned and ran, because his request is not the kind of matter your wild mother equipped you to deal with, nor has Ababa given you instruction on this. You try to think, try to reason with yourself, but neither has been your strength and you dislike making anything more complicated than it needs to be.

But everyone seems to do that on their own.

Ababa: it was all lies, then. He never cared for you, never loved you, and his tokens of affection were but deliberate falsehoods to tame you. Reshape you. Take you and put you in the skin of a human boy.

Biarce: he wants you to kill him. He is your brother yet not by blood. But when was the last time you had someone of your own blood anyway? Never. And now he wants you to kill him so he won't have to kill you.

You stand up and turn to face the door. You might have forgotten, but your body remembers. Your body remembers crawling through a rock tunnel, remembers the scratches and scrapes that marked your back and your arms for a time. You breathe in as you grasp the doorknob. Your wild sister's mewling drifts to you from ahead.

When you open the door, Biarce has stopped pacing. He is sitting on the floor in the middle of your room, stiff as a board with his hands on his thighs. The dagger rests on the floor before him.

"I can't do it myself," he whispers. "He'll know. He'll stop me again."

You found your wild sister barely curled against a rock wall. She was little more than a trio of paws and a head and you had vowed to hunt whatever creature had turned this small predator into its prey. She mewls when you approach, the walls of the tunnel pressing into you as you made the last stretch.

"It doesn't have to be like this," you tell Biarce.

It does. It did. You'd reached for your sister and she had used what little strength she had to swipe at your eye, making you cry in pain and her to droop further in on herself. Biarce does not claw at you.

"I have no choice, Yamato," he says, and it hurts as much as almost losing your eye. "He will take my mind and I will kill you. I'm sorry, there's so much I wish I could tell you."

She cried and cried, already dead. Even then you'd known it was no mercy that she lived. So you'd taken her paw, claw still out, and slashed it across her neck and given her peace.

Biarce waits. His eyes search yours. He wears no smile or scowl.

"I don't want to do this," you tell him.

"He's coming," answers Biarce. "He knows what we're doing. I can't hold him off much longer."

The air grows still.

You step closer to the dagger at your feet. You hesitate.

"Please." Biarce closes his eyes. "I want to go while I'm still me."

You pick up the dagger and slit his throat.

You slip from the wilderness to your human senses a second later, when your hands are as red as your scarf, and you cry and feel him sink against you. He is still and silent. Something swirls about you both and presses down on you, fighting you, but you struggle against its weight and wrap your arms around him in another hug. What have you done? What have you done? _What have you done?_

***

You are still holding your brother when the door slides open. You do not hear Ababa cry out. You are racing your sisters in your mind.

The air is still.

A beam of light strikes you and you fall away.


End file.
